RaindropillismStanding too close

Nov 10, 2012Not seeing the Nile for the Raindrops
Many people do not even realize they are interfacing with the Gulen Movement when they first encounter some Raindrops. They may attend a dialog dinner, or go on a
Turkey trip, or some Gulenists may visit their office. Or, perhaps they send their child to a Gulen school. This is what they see - a few well-mannered, well-dressed Raindrops
with an air of sincerity who speak of peace, tolerance, and the importance of
education:

To some eyes it is a beautiful picture.

However, it is like standing too close to the Seurat painting at the national gallery, and seeing only a small patch of points. When one steps back further, the picture starts to appear different:

Still, there is no clearly identifiable overall hierarchy; the individual Raindrops mostly appear randomly distributed - "loosely organized" it could be called. It is necessary to step back even further, so that one is a completely detached observer:

Now it is clear what the picture represents. The Raindrops coalesce to form the mighty sigmoidal Nile, snaking its way across the tableau. (Regarding the role of "Raindrop" and "Nile" in the Gulen Movement, see this page.)

The failure to perceive Raindropillism – by standing too close, or seeing only a collection of individual, "loosely-organized" drops – has led to many mistaken perceptions of the Gulen Movement.

The Nile is Less than the Sum of the Raindrops

When casual observers or sympathizers of the Gulen Movement speak of it, they often begin with “AlI I see is hard-working, dedicated individuals …,” or "What I see is sincere people..." The key phrases here are “all I see” or "what I see." They are standing too close and seeing only a few raindrops instead of the complete Raindropillist tableau.

Many individual Raindrops are indeed hard-working, highly educated, capable, and polite when encountered in person (although politeness disappears towards anyone who is critical of the Movement, unless their status makes them too important to dismiss). Some Gulenist individuals even appear to have strong moral convictions. The problem does not lie with these individuals in and of themselves. Judging them as isolated individuals leads to an overly favorable impression of the Gulen Movement, to seeing it as more benign than it truly is.

When Gulenists come together in their coordinated efforts, the outcome is, disappointingly, far less productive and far less benign than would have been expected based on the capabilities, industry, and demeanor of the individuals.

Somehow the Gulen Movement manages to be so much less than the sum of its parts.

Consider, for example, the case of Dr. Bekir S. Gur, a founder and former board of Beehive Science and Technology Academy, a Gulen charter school in Utah. (Gur has since returned to Turkey.) Dr. Gur’s doctoral dissertation in Instructional Technology from Utah State University contains some remarkably good ideas. For instance, he writes:

“Reformers who have been eager to make schools efficient instruments of American global economic competitiveness speak mostly about standards, test scores, and accountability, but they seem to have forgotten 'the historic civic idealism and broad social purposes public schools serve in a democracy' (Cuban, 2001, p. 189). In such a climate, it is no surprise that computers have been increasingly bought but, Cuban noted, the question 'Toward what ends' have [sic] not been addressed.”

“To illustrate, some of the fundamental needs of education are smaller class size, higher entry-level teacher salaries, responsive school communities (Cuban, 2001); skilling and intellectualizing teachers (Apple, 1986, 1995; Giroux, 1988); a more equal funding and teacher distribution for schools (Kozol, 1992); a less oppressive education based on educational vision of justice and equality and of avoiding global empire building (Kincheloe, 2004).”

It is ironic that someone who founded a Gulen school would write these words. No network of schools in the world could be more accurately described as engaging in “global empire building” than the Gulen schools. Further, Gulen schools are notorious for mistreating teachers and paying them low salaries. A Jan 5, 2012 piece in the Indianapois Star reported that "Average pay at the Indiana Math and Science Academy is just $30,500 — a whopping $24,000 less than IPS [Indianapolis Public Schools]." (Indiana Math and Science Academy is a Gulen charter school.) In other countries, former teachers report poor treatment, with delayed paychecks and a need to continually struggle with the administration to get paid (see forums at the Chronicle of Higher Education website on Gulen universities and Fatih University).

As for the “educational vision of justice and equality,” the Gulen schools are elitist and profit-motivated, and for the most part have scant interest in helping special needs students.Beehive Science and Technology Academy is part of a nationwide network of Gulen charter schools that advertise themselves precisely as “efficient instruments of American global competitiveness,” and that “speak mostly about standards, test scores, and accountability.” All these schools boast about their computerized student information systems and "data-driven" methods, and they place a great emphasis on preparation for standardized tests.

Dr. Gur is critical of how “the role of teacher and textbook seem to be reversed in many classrooms wherein teachers become a support system for the textbook (and other instructional materials) rather than the other way round…” He also expresses concern that “Moreover, teachers’ work is increasingly intensified. More and more needs to be done in less time…”

Again, the irony. Gulen schools work their teachers to the bone. Further, Gulen charter schools have been quite happy to adopt the rhetoric of the "flipped classroom" - with teachers as a support system for the online instructional materials - when they perceived it as useful and fashionable; Bekir Duz, the principal of Truebright Science Academy in Pennsylvania (part of the same chain as Beehive), told the Philadelphia Tribune in September 2012 “We
use data-driven instruction and utilized The Khan Academy method..."

Gur further laments that “…prepackaged instruction has become more prominent in many educational settings.”

Yet the Gulen charter schools – including Beehive - are exploited as a market for superfluous prepackaged instructional materials ("Technology Integrated Education," for example) produced by Gulenist educational services corporations such as the Accord Institute.

How then could Dr. Gur express a set of ideals in his dissertation while at the same time working for a multinational chain of schools that runs completely against those ideals?

For that matter, how can some Gulenists be (by all appearances) pious and sincere in their own lives, while actively participating in an international network of fraud and deception?

It seems that there is something about membership in the Gulen Movement that leads its members to abandon their own personal principles, their own sense of right and wrong, through some group dynamic that validates behaviors and values that these members would likely never subscribe to through their own individual agency. Perhaps Hannah Arendt’s concept of the “banality of evil” has some application here. Perhaps Gulenists in groupthink mode feel that they are doing no wrong because so many of their fellow members - their "brothers" - are doing the same.

Whatever the reason, it is clear that an accurate impression of the Gulen Movement cannot be formed by looking only at its individual members. Again, it is necessary to step back and see the whole picture.

In their preface to their book The Gulen Hizmet Movement: Circumspect Activism in Faith-Based Reform, Tamer Balci and Christopher L Miller try to preempt any questioning of the objectivity of the contributing authors (all of whom are either members or sympathizers of the Gulen Movement) by asserting that “These complicating factors mean, for one thing, that researchers cannot thoroughly study the movement without the cooperation from the GHM and its sub-organizations."

They have it backwards. It is not possible to study the Gulen Movement with its cooperation.

Many writings on the Gulen Movement are the products of embedded journalism, embedded sociology, or embedded anthropology. The significant dangers of any sort of embedded scholarship have been noted in other contexts. In late 2009, the New York Times ran an article entitled "Panel criticizes military's use of embedded anthropologists." The Washington Post in 2010 published a piece on "The dangers of embedded journalism, in war and politics." Both these articles touched on the fact that embedded observers - those who stand too close - may lack objectivity and may fail to see important parts of the picture.

Yet while the perils of "embedding" are well-known, journalists and academics who went on Gulenist Turkey trips or have otherwise become close to Gulenists have nevertheless had no reservations about writing favorably about the Gulen Movement, usually without disclosing their potential bias. In a video of the 2010 Gulen conference in Amsterdam, the moderator can be seen introducing Maria Curtis: "Our next speaker is Professor Maria Curtis from the University of Houston Clear Lake, Texas. And she's an assistant professor of anthropology and cross-cultural studies at that university, and, to be brief, she does fieldwork of and among Turkish women and in Morocco, and her current research is focused on the transnational participation of women adherents of the Gulen Movement as they move between Turkey and the US, and I guess she's going to speak from that research, dealing with both the US and Turkey. And I'm very happy that she's here and I happily give her the floor." At no point is it mentioned that Dr. Curtis is married to Kemal "Mark" Namver, an individual who has been affiliated with the Cosmos Foundation, and has been involved in founding and running several Gulen charter schools in Texas and New Mexico. Likewise, a brochure for the Gulen Institute lists "studies" of the Gulen Movement without mentioning that they are all the products of embedded research.

Another example of "embedded scholarship" is the "Gulen chair" established at Australian Catholic University and funded, according to a 2008 article in The Austalian that quotes Australian Intercultural Society (AIS) spokesman Orhan Cicek as a source, by the AIS, its overseas contacts, and the Australian Turkish community. (The AIS is a Gulenist organization.) The Australian further quoted Cicek: "He said the chair was not set up to spread the views of Gulen and as far as he knew Dr. Albayrak was not a follower." This line was intended of course to stress that Albayrak would function as an objective scholar. However, Albayrak's publications list shows that he clearly is a follower of Gulen. Moreover, the Australian Catholic University website (accessed in Oct 2011) states, in its list of responsibilities associated with the Gulen Chair, that the occupant of this chair "contributes to leadership education with a focus on the teachings of Islam, especially as expounded in the works of M. Fethullah Gulen," completely contradicting Cicek's assertion that the chair had nothing to do with disseminating Gulen's teachings.

It is time for the academic world to categorically reject “embedded” research of the Gulen Movement. Gulen-sponsored “Gulen Institutes” and “Gulen Chairs" have no place in the world of serious scholarship.

As for Balci and Miller’s contention, that the Gulen Movement cannot be studied without its cooperation, an excellent refutation of this line of argument is given by Sonia Ryang in her book on North Korea, which, needless to say, she wrote without the cooperation of that country:

"The anthropologist might say: 'How can we know about these people when we cannot conduct fieldwork?' This is a valid concern. But it is also true that anthropologists have always studied peoples and cultures at great distances without ever having visited the places where they were found. The first example that should be remembered in this context is Ruth Benedict's The Chrysanthenum and the Sword. Written during World War II under the directive of the U.S. Office of War Information, this book became a postwar cultural reconstruction manual for the Japanese themselves. Even today, this book is one of the longest-selling classics in Japan's bookstores. Conversely, one may conduct lengthy fieldwork in one place, only to come up with a body of material that appears to confirm previously assumed positions..."

This last sentence could apply to Helen Rose Ebaugh. While she conducted fieldwork in Turkey and in Gulenist centers in the United States, her book on the Gulen Movement nevertheless misses (or elides) key points. Other writers, who never got as close as she did to the Movement, have produced far more accurate assessments.

Besides standing at a distance, observers must also see all colors: a multidisciplinary approach is needed

The many Raindrops that make up the Gulen Movement take on many roles - in finance, business, politics, education, journalism, communications, information technology, academics, social networking, police work, and so forth. Researchers from a single discipline see Raindrops of only one color. Berna Turam's excellent study of the Gulen Movement is very useful, but does not address the all-important issue of its finances. Sociologists may have difficulty accurately assessing the educational effectiveness of Gulen schools, as education is not their field. Education experts can analyze the schools, yet may miss key aspects relating to their political and financial context as part of the Gulen Movement. A multidisciplinary team of political scientists, economists, forensic accountants, psychologists, sociologists, and experts in education and marketing is needed to truly understand the Gulen Movement and its operations.

None of this is easy. Methodical analysis of a very complex system is time-consuming and does not excite many people. But until researchers step up to the task, we will continue to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into the Nile, without even having a clear picture of it.